You were told as a child not to climb up trees deemed too high. Common sense tells you that glass breaks easily. But once you decide to ignore those voices in your head and step out on the Ledge, you'll find that being suspended in a glass box 1,353 feet high isn't so bad. Even though your legs are trembling, you'll feel pretty powerful, like a superhero floating in air, looking down at tiny cars on Wacker Drive. The Willis (formerly Sears) Tower Skydeck's newest...

Visitors were back on the Ledge this morning, stepping into the four glass boxes that jut from the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower, after a protective coating that shattered was replaced. “There's a lot of excitement up here, that's what there always is,” said Chicago Skydeck general manager Randy Stancik. “There's a lot of energy.” The Ledge, on the 103rd floor of the skyscraper, was closed on Thursday after the coating on one of the glass floors shattered as...

A man edges along the 21st-story ledge of a midtown New York City hotel. He's an ex-cop and a convicted thief on the lam, straight out of Sing Sing, and he's threatening suicide. Sam Worthington, of"Avatar" and"Clash of the Titans," plays this character, Nick Cassidy, and it is odd to see Worthington on a precipice without winged beasts or blue friendlies buzzing about his head. The only thing buzzing in "Man on a Ledge" are little gnats of narrative...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - An Italian man climbed on to a ledge on the dome of St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday to protest against the economic crisis, a Vatican official said. It was the fourth time the man, identified as Marcello Di Finizio, has staged such protest in less than two years. He reached the ledge by climbing over a railing at the top of the dome where tourists climb via an indoor staircase to get a spectacular view of Rome. Television images showed him...

Sam Worthington has insisted over the years that he isn't the tough guy he often plays on the big screen, but the star of “Avatar,” “Clash of the Titans” and “Terminator Salvation” did little to disprove his macho persona when we met in his downtown Chicago hotel last week - at least at first. Worthington, who was born in England but raised in Australia, greeted me sporting a hooded sweatshirt and what looked like week-old stubble. He took a seat...

VATICAN CITY, Oct 2 (Reuters) - An Italian man clambered onto a ledge on the huge dome of St Peter's Basilica on Tuesday to stage a precarious protest against Prime Minister Mario Monti and the European Union. Video footage showed the man, identified as Marcello Di Finizio, jumping over railings near the top of the 137-m- (450- ft-) high dome on Tuesday afternoon, shocking visitors taking a tour. He then tied a cord to the railings and abseiled to a ledge over a window...

Adams County, Colo., Sheriff's Lt. Donna Vigil spent 168 chilly hours on a 15-foot-high billboard ledge in Thornton, 15 miles north of Denver, last month to raise money for a program to educate 6th graders about drug abuse. "The response has been tremendous," said Vigil via cellular telephone from her perch as drivers honked their horns and waved. "I`ve gotten calls from school kids I`ve never even met, thanking me for doing this for them." Her weeklong stint in temperatures that dropped below...

LONDON - It is neither natural nor sane, David Boudia very convincingly argued Monday, to stare at a tub of water from a three-story high ledge and leap off. So, as a petrified young diver, he wouldn't. His form of protest was climbing to the 10-meter platform and plopping down - a sit-in to sit-out - while his coach screamed from below. This lasted for 10 to 20 minutes. All that coaxed him off were his mother's bribes of compact discs or whatever else entices a 12- to...

Lounge Ax has booked its share of edgy bands over the years, but even the Lincoln Park club's regular denizens are in for a shock, because the Legendary Stardust Cowboy will record a live album there Saturday night. When it comes to pure punk energy and all-around weirdness, today's bands can't hold a candle to "The Ledge" -- who also is the subject of the documentary film "Cotton Pickin' Smash!: The Story of The Legendary Stardust Cowboy." The opening lines of that film provide a good a summation of the...

Firefighters and police were able to rescue a man who appeared ready to jump from a sixth-floor ledge at a North Michigan Avenue high-rise this afternoon, authorities said. Streets were blocked in the area around 900 North Michigan Avenue after authorities were called about 2:45 p.m. because a man was acting as if he would jump from the ledge there, said Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Darryl Baety. The man was running back and forth on the ledge while...

When I sent out a message on Facebook on Tuesday alerting my friends on the social-networking site that I was heading to The Ledge, the series of glass bays that extend just more than 4 feet outward from Sears Tower and let you look 1,353 feet straight down, an old college roommate responded with mock sympathy. "Don't do it -- please don't do it!!" he wrote. "We'll get through this!" "Sorry to disappoint you," I typed back upon returning. "I made it back alive." I...

Sam Worthington has insisted over the years that he isn't the tough guy he often plays on the big screen, but the star of “Avatar,” “Clash of the Titans” and “Terminator Salvation” did little to disprove his macho persona when we met in his downtown Chicago hotel last week - at least at first. Worthington, who was born in England but raised in Australia, greeted me sporting a hooded sweatshirt and what looked like week-old stubble. He took a seat...

From its narrow backroom theater at 1531 N. Wells St., A Red Orchid Theatre has presented some of the most interestingly offbeat premieres and revivals of the year in off-Loop drama. "7 Stories," the troupe's final production of 1994, continues that tradition, though the play, a 1989 Canadian drama having its U.S. premiere here, is an erratic and problematic work. "7 Stories," by Morris Panych, is a whimsical, humorous bit of sentiment, set on the seventh-story ledge of a...

A man edges along the 21st-story ledge of a midtown New York City hotel. He's an ex-cop and a convicted thief on the lam, straight out of Sing Sing, and he's threatening suicide. Sam Worthington, of"Avatar" and"Clash of the Titans," plays this character, Nick Cassidy, and it is odd to see Worthington on a precipice without winged beasts or blue friendlies buzzing about his head. The only thing buzzing in "Man on a Ledge" are little gnats of narrative...

A Lake Forest teenager was apparently groggy from sleep when she fell to her death at an Ohio university, mistaking the wide ledge of a fourth-floor window for a bed, authorities said Thursday. Foul play has been ruled out in the death of Anne Thomson, 17, a junior at Lake Forest High School who fell from the open dorm window Saturday while visiting her sister at Denison University near Columbus. She died Tuesday. "We think she crawled through the window thinking she was getting into bed,"...

Divorce often comes as a shock. "But they seemed so happy," even the wizened Faker finds herself thinking, sometimes with sadness, sometimes with schadenfreude (but only if the spouses overshared about the stress of scheduling spa appointments around golf outings). It is not in the Faker's job description to be duped. So she sought expert counsel on what a good marriage really looks like. If you are convinced that yours isn't one of them, but you want your neighbor/nanny/spouse to be the last...

Three layers of half-inch-thick glass were all that separated me from what looked like Matchbox cars and tiny people about 100 stories below. My stomach was queasy and my heart pounded. But the view from this glass box -- about the size of an elevator -- was breathtaking and terrifying, especially for someone who fears heights. Welcome to The Ledge, the four new enclosed glass boxes that jut out about 4 feet from the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower. The latest addition to the 110-story high-rise...

When I reached author Leslie Marmon Silko at her home in Tucson, Ariz., not long ago, our conversation about her new memoir, "The Turquoise Ledge," eventually drifted to the subject of her pets, a vast brood that includes six English Mastiffs, one pit bull, seven birds, one rattlesnake and a favored parrot named Gray Bird, who likes to watch "Sesame Street" and was apparently sitting nearby during our interview. "She knows I'm talking to you about her, she's getting very excited!"

As hotel guests go, this family is a housekeeper's nightmare. First, the place is a mess. No such thing as a bathroom for this bunch. Mom won't let anybody clean things up, either. And those kids--always squawking. But the worst is the leftover food. I mean, dead birds and rodents? C'mon. So it is in Room 1137 of the Sheraton Chicago Northwest Hotel in Arlington Heights ever since the red-tailed hawks came to stay in March. Actually, it's right outside the Hawk Room, as it's...